A phobia rises to the level of pathological ...is an anxiety disorder in and of itself.
As an example?
Someone who is deeply afraid/terrified of spiders put in a room with a spider may shriek, move to the opposite side of the room, keep their eye on the spider and adjust their position in the room accordingly. (There’s actually a psych test for fear & phobias that measures how many meters someone is willing to put between themselves and the object of their fear. Normal level fears include everything from as far away as possible, all the way up to touching / squishing distance... as long as it doesn’t jump towards them, and then they’re likely to fear spike and leap backwards, attempt to get as far away as possible, etc.). There’s often a lot of self-talk, conditioning in this process as people self-moderate attempt to get their fear levels down / manageable. Spike settle spike settle kind of thing.
Someone with a
phobia of spiders not only won’t tolerate being in the room with one at all (and if locked in, will beat the door bloody attempting to get out of the room; even if the spider is totally harmless they will cause serious physical harm to themselves attempting to escape), but ALSO spends a significant period of time worrying about spiders, attempting to avoid them before coming across them (to the degree of not going outside, checking themselves obsessively in mirrors in case a spider might have crawled up their back, not going to schools or taking jobs with green spaces, not turning the lights out because then they wouldn’t be able to see the spiders coming for them, not having appliances within 12inches of the wall so there’s nowhere dark for them to nest/hide, knowing all the local spider predators and avoiding
them also, because if they’re there? There’s probably a spider nearby, won’t sleep under blankets or if they do not only pulls the bed apart before going to sleep (okay, no spiders)
and also sets an alarm to wake up and check the blankets for spiders during the night at regular intervals, etc., etc., etc. << All of which = significant impairment. Also, instead of the spike/settle/spike/settle thing people who are afraid do? It’s more similar to the spike just being the
start of a panic attack. Spike-BLAST OFF!!!
Fear of spiders? Totally normal. And very common.
Phobia of spiders? Deblilitating, life affecting, and fairly rare.
As a rule of thumb?
- If you’re afraid of the thing when you
see it? Or when there’s a strong likelihood of it being present? It’s a fear.
- If you’re afraid of it all of the time, it’s a phobia.
Rule of thumb
only because there are a lot of things which can cause fears to be present waking, eating, sleeping, washing your hair, going to work, having sex, making a sandwich, paying bills, IE 24/7/365. Trauma, for example, can both cause phobias AND phobia-LIKE reactions (But sort the trauma and the fear goes away, because it’s a fear not a phobia). OCD, GAD, HFA, and several other disorders, similar. Instead of the phobia causing the 24/7 thinking, it’s the O-part of the OCD, or it’s the anxiety picking a target, or the fixation, etc. It’s a big part of why accurate diagnosis is so important, disorders share symptoms. But what’s driving the symptom, and what treats it? Are very different things in different disorders.
(To jump examples for a second, I could do it with spiders, but my skin is crawling already) 5 people can all be certain of someone coming through the door and assaulting them if they don’t keepmit locked at all times, and check the locks a bazillion times a day.
PTSD - Someone has come through the unlocked door and assaulted them
OCD - Unless they check the locks someone will (but never has) / magical thinking.
Delusional Disorder - The aliens already did (No. No they didn’t)
Specific Phobia - :eek: (no rational -or irrational- thought about why, it’s just unadulterated pure fear)
HFA - Someone they trust told them that we lock doors to keep the bad people out, once, and they took it as literal fact of what WILL happen if the door isn’t locked and so they’re simply following what they perceive to be the logical course of action.
Etc.
ETA
@Sideways... do you share my fear of spiders or was this just a coincidence? (I almost chose crocodiles as my example, as I’m skeered shitless of them, too, but figured spiders was more relatable.)
